Collide, or, The CooperBallard Convergence
by Femme Bono
Summary: Whitney Ballard is a jaded military vet who has met many people in her life, but none of them have prepared her for Dr. Sheldon Cooper, PhD. Just a touch of a songfic here, which was the inspiration. SC/OFC -sorry Shamy and Shenny shippers... (Rated for later chapters.) COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

Cht 1

_The dawn is breaking  
__A light shining through_

Whitney Ballard was almost to the fourth floor landing when she decided it wasn't worth trying to haul all her gear up at once. She tossed the duffle up the next flight of stairs and hoisted her ruck onto both shoulders, switching the pack she carried over her left arm onto her right. _Too damn many bags_, she thought and glanced up at the duffle. _Oops_. Her gaze trailed up from the duffle to a pair of feet and the long long legs of the man she'd nearly hit with it. _Hello blue eyes_…she said to herself.

"Oh sorry!" she said, wincing. "I didn't see you up there."

"Well, I should hope not," he said primly, fingering the messenger bag he had crossed over his torso. His slim fingers toyed with the strap as he sized her up, while somehow avoiding eye contact.

Whitney jogged up, taking every other step and outstretched her hand after shifting her pack back over to the left. "Whitney. Whitney Ballard. I'm moving into 5A."

"5A? That's where Alicia lives!" said the man, clearly perplexed at this news.

"Well, apparently not anymore." Whitney dropped her outstretched hand.

"But I never heard her leave," he continued, almost to himself. "She never notified us in writing at least 48 hours in advance. She's in breach of her Neighbor Agreement!"

_Ahh what? _

"Okay…well, I guess that's something for you guys to work out." And with that, Whitney shook her head and continued past her strange new neighbor, wondering just what in the hell kind of agreement they had entered into—in writing, no less. She chuckled to herself, turning back just before the next flight of stairs.

"Sorry, I didn't catch your name?"

"That's because I didn't throw it," he replied and then snuffled. "Bazinga."

"Aha, okay," she said with a wry smile. "So what _is_ your name?"

"Dr. Sheldon Cooper."

"Nice to meet you, Dr. Cooper."

"Just a moment!" he said, raising a hand as she turned and started away again. "Do you dance, wear high heels, have children, plan to have children, and/or play a percussive instrument?"

"Ahhh…not in public, sometimes, no, maybe, and no. Why?"

"I need to know what manner of cacophony to prepare for since I'm living in the apartment under you. I will try to draw up an agreement that reflects the lifestyle in which you live and the level of tolerable noise with which I am willing to contend."

"Riiight. I guess I'll be seeing you then." And with that, Whitney blew out a breath and started trudging up the stairs again. _Well that was awkward as all hell_.

"Good day," he replied behind her. "Oh! But what about your other bag?"

"I'll get it in a sec!"

"Are you just going to leave it here? Would you like me to bring it up?"

_Seriously dude, I doubt you could carry it_.

"Nah, that's okay. I'll get it!" Whitney laughed to herself and just kept climbing. Clearly, someone's social skills were a little off. _Doesn't matter_, she thought, _you've seen worse_. And god knew too, she had her own issues.

Yet when Whitney closed the door to 5A, she still could not get her quirky new neighbor out of her mind.


	2. Chapter 2

Cht 2

_I'm quiet you know  
You make a first impression_

Whitney had finished putting her gear in the room she had designated as her office; she had unpacked and shelved most of the smaller things, pouches and canteens, her helmet and winter boots, but left the cold weather gear and uniforms rolled in the bag. The movers should be coming the next day with the rest of her belongings, but she had the necessities and had already pulled the sleeping bag from her duffle for tonight. She was contemplating a shower, maybe leaching off someone's internet for a little while and finding a place for take-out before turning in early, but her thoughts were quickly derailed when she heard a knock at the door.

She tracked noiselessly through the living room, checked the peep hole and sighed. It was Dr. Weird with a cohort—a short bespectacled man with a barely contained curly mane and a hoodie. With a wry smile, Whitney slid the chain off the door, unbolted it and swung it open to greet the two men.

"Well if it isn't Mork and Mindy," she said gesturing them inside with a sweep of her hand. "Welcome to my humble abode, gents. What can I do for you?"

"Whitney," said Sheldon Cooper, eyeing her empty apartment disdainfully. "I'd like to introduce you to my roommate, Dr. Leonard Hofstadter."

"Hi," said Curly offering a hand. "Just 'Leonard' is fine."

_Well, at least this one is socialized_ thought Whitney. "Nice to meet you," she replied, shaking his hand. "I'd offer you guys a seat, but they're not here yet."

"Clearly," Sheldon cut in. "Now, if you don't mind, I also took the liberty of drawing up a contract that should prove mutually beneficial to both parties, namely you and I."

"It stipulates the conditions under which we can amicably coexist," he continued, offering a stapled document for her perusal. Whitney simply arched a brow in derision and looked up at Sheldon's hopeful smile.

"Feel free to negotiate where you want," Leonard put in. "Probably won't work though," he added, almost under his breath.

"Oh I'll take a look at it, sure," said Whitney smiling. "But I can tell you now, if there's anything I don't agree with, I'm not signing. I don't sign anything I haven't read though, so it may be a couple of days before I can get it back to you."

"A couple of days?!" Sheldon interjected.

"That's right," Whitney nodded once as he sputtered to rebut what she had said. "Should I decide I need a lawyer to go over it, I'll take it to the closest JAG office and have someone there look it over. Being that I'm a military service member I have the right to NOT sign anything that would prove a detriment to my ability to serve in the proper capacity. In other words, you cannot put demands on me which would possibly keep me from being able to do my job at any given time."

At this point Sheldon had noticeably started to twitch, first his eye, then his mouth. Agitated did not quite describe his reaction. Having a bit of a mean streak, Whitney decided to toy with him just a bit longer.

"In fact, since my contract with the government takes precedence over anything else, this is just about a moot point…"

Sheldon's face spasmed again as he shifted his weight from one foot to another, a sign he felt quite literally wrong-footed. Apparently this lanky loon was all too used to getting his way. _Oooh it's going to be _such_ fun having this guy around._ But enough was enough.

"Tell you what: I'll look it over tonight and if there's anything I want to change or don't agree with, I'll cross it out and add some suggestions or something in the margins. You know, just so it really is mutually beneficial to all parties," she added with a sarcastic smile.

Sheldon's facial twitch smoothed into a glacial scowl, but he conceded. "Very well. If there's no progress to be made tonight for our new partnership, we'll wish you a good night." With that, he started to turn and march out of the apartment, but Leonard raised a hand.

"Hold on a second," he said slowly, "you said you were in the military?" His eyes scrunched up, and he tilted his chin as if contemplating this.

"Yeah," Whitney replied. "I've been active duty the past six years, but I just got out. I'm in the Guard now, but I've got a contract job out here while I finish school."

"Oh cool!" Leonard said, fidgeting with the zipper on his hoodie. "It's just… we're playing paintball tomorrow and could use someone on our team who can, you know, shoot." He said it as more of a question and Whitney figured it was his backhanded way of inviting her to play.

She spared a glance at Sheldon, who was now looking at her as if she was some sort of prime specimen in a petri dish. Taking a deep breath and rubbing her hands on her jeans, Whitney took her first shot at making non-military friends.

"That sounds like fun," she said.

"Great!" said Leonard, lighting up like he'd just won some quiz bowl or something. "We'll be leaving at eight tomorrow if that's not too early."

_Too early? Civilians…_ Whitney shook her head in mute amusement, then said, "nah, I think I can handle that."

"Do you have something appropriate to wear?" Sheldon chimed in, his fingers nervously working the hem of his Flash t-shirt. "I'm sure Leonard could loan you something if not."

"Pssh!" said Whitney, dismissing the offer. "I'm sure I've got an old uniform that would be super appropriate for this."

"Great!" said Leonard, looking like a Christmas had come two months early. "Can't wait. Well, we'll see you bright and early tomorrow! Good night."

"Good night," Sheldon piped up. Whitney held the door open as Leonard smiled at her on his way out and Sheldon offered a tentative smile and nod before exiting after Leonard.

Whitney locked up behind them, shaking her head. _One point Whitney Ballard_, she thought, _zero for Sheldon Cooper_. Chuckling, she pulled out her cell and did a quick search for Chinese restaurants in the area, thinking that the next day she would see how well the geeks could wage a paintball war. She grudgingly admitted that she was more than a little interested to see what the twitchy Dr. Cooper did to expend all that nervous fidgety energy. With a small sigh though, she pushed that thought to the back of her mind.


	3. Chapter 3

Cht 3

_I'm open, you're closed  
Where I follow, you'll go_

Sheldon Cooper had never before been able to gloat in victory over a paintball match, but today had just been his lucky day. Only he didn't believe in luck. What he did believe in was a secret weapon, and Whitney Ballard had proven herself in the heat of battle. She taught them things that in years of playing World of Warcraft and other strategy games they had never considered or seen. He was now willing to openly admit that he needed her. She would make a great hunter for their post-apocalyptic landing party.

In the beginning he had grudgingly conceded her points when she assumed control of strategizing over the playing field, but his measure of her shifted considerably when they successfully downed the entire geology team—and let's face it, they had had it coming since they slaughtered him last year when he had nobly sacrificed himself for the good of the team. Even sweeter was the fact that she had set up both Kripke and Leslie Winkle to be the leaders of what she called a wedge formation that ultimately ended in the two physicists becoming collateral damage.

By the time the match finished and the tired and sore victors returned to the apartment building, Sheldon was in such a generous mood that he even invited their newly established paintball team general to eat Thai dinner at their place later that night.

Whitney, in equally good spirits, accepted. She was relieved to know that the guys' girlfriends would be there. Penny, Leonard's girlfriend who showed up for paintball also, had proven to be not only an asset to the team, but a welcome dose of 'normal' in an otherwise ragtag group of Poindexters. Whitney could not fathom how she and Leonard had gotten together. More amazing was the fact that Howard, a closet perv who also worked with the guys at Caltech, was married. Whitney could not wait to meet the woman who had decided that guy was a prize. Truth be known, she was more than idly curious to meet Sheldon's girlfriend and tried to ignore the little drop in her gut at learning he had one in the first place.

She just wanted to feed Raj alcohol to find out if he could actually talk. The most she had gotten out of him that morning was a squeak when she addressed him openly. But first things first, she had to meet the movers at two and hopefully have the apartment cleaned before they started hauling in furniture. Then dinner and what proved to be a sideshow of scientists.

When she traipsed downstairs that night after a quick shower to wash off the grime of cleaning and unpacking, Whitney knocked on 4A's door and waited only a moment before it swung open to reveal a smiling Penny.

"Hey Whitney, come on in!"

"Hey there," Whitney replied, gesturing with the bottle of wine she had brought. "I come bearing gifts."

"Oooh awesome! I'll just let this chill for a minute. Come on in and meet everybody."

The guys greeted her cheerily as she walked in, and a blond chirpy woman with glasses introduced herself as Bernadette. Whitney glanced over to the couch where Sheldon sat next to a surly looking girl in head to toe tweed. She wrapped her arms possessively around one of Sheldon's, causing him to stiffen up uncomfortably. _Looks like someone's a tad insecure_…

"You must be Sheldon's girlfriend," Whitney said, accepting a beer from Leonard. "Amy, right?"

"That's right, he's mine so mitts off!" Amy replied brusquely.

A corner of Whitney's mouth quirked up. "Yeah no problem. I'll try to tamp down the urge to straddle him right here and now."

"You just do that," Amy replied tersely. "I may not look like much to you, but I could cut your head open like a melon just to see what I'd find."

"Ah, Amy, sweetie," Penny interjected, handing the girl a much needed beer. "I think Sheldon's quite safe from Whitney."

Whitney shook her head and glanced at Bernadette, who smiled ruefully. No one seemed to think Amy's behavior was out of the ordinary at all, which was sadly telling. _The real question is_, Whitney wondered, _who would save Sheldon from Amy?_

The rest of the evening proved much less awkward. She had to deflect a few passes from Raj once he started drinking, but Bernadette thankfully tamped down on Howard's perviness and Penny proved to be a great foil to Leonard's waffling science speak. She had a gift for letting him know when he started rambling off on tangents.

They wound up watching a copy of _The Labyrinth_, which was punctuated by Sheldon expounding on the merits of Jim Henson's puppetry and an argument as to whether or not Jareth was truly dead since the owl was watching Sara and her friends at the window in the ending scene.

Not long after the movie was done, Howard and Bernadette begged off since they clearly wanted to make an early night of it and had to drop a drunken Raj off first. So Whitney wound up walking out with Penny and Leonard as they headed across to Penny's apartment. Whitney said good-night to them at the stairs and slowly climbed to her own apartment where she promptly passed out as soon as she could climb into bed.

Downstairs though, Sheldon and Amy got into as heated an argument as the two could in nearly monotone voices.

"Sheldon," Amy droned. "I do not like how she looks at you. She looks as if she actually finds you amusing, and I am the only one allowed to do so."

"Amy," Sheldon huffed. "That is absolutely preposterous!"

"Loads of people find me humorous," he added a beat later. "I do have quite the sense of humor."

"But that's not all. She looks at you when she thinks no one is looking at her—a clear sign of romantic interest. Why, if she were a gibbon, she would be bending over and displaying her hindquarters in invitation!"

Sheldon got a fleeting image of Whitney bending over and showing her rump. Granted, it would make the traditional heart shape with its well-roundedness…

"Sheldon!" Amy cut into his thoughts with the same precision she showed with her brain samples.

Sheldon snapped to and almost blushed at the train of thought his mind had taken him on at the mere suggestion of the girl upstairs. _Oh dear lord, I'm getting as hormonal as Wolowitz_, he thought, _what's next? Tacky belt buckles and skinny jeans?_

"You're attracted to her aren't you," Amy gasped. "That—that—little pixie is the Tinkerbell to my Wendy! Well…there's no such thing as fairies, Peter Pan!"

"Amy!" Sheldon began, not knowing quite where to go with his argument once he had her attention. "You know I have no interest in coitus."

"Maybe not with me; maybe that's why it's been three years with nothing but handholding and chaste kisses and barely a cuddle! But you could easily see it with that—that wanton GI Jane with her tiny little body and her wicked fairy tattoo."

"I admit that Penny is aesthetically pleasing to look at and concede that she is attractive to members of the opposite sex, and you do not find that troubling," he hedged.

"That's because she is my beautiful best friend and she's already taken. Besides, if you wanted to have a nice tasteful ménage a trois with her I would be on that in a heartbeat!"

"Amy!" Sheldon tsked, clearly discomfited with the direction their conversation had taken. "I couldn't possibly! She's like my long-lost hayseed sister—like a blond Missy, if you will."

"Besides, coitus is messy enough with just two people. It would be a veritable plague fest with three."

"That's what condoms and mouthwash are for Sheldon! You make sure you brush, floss and rinse, then wrap it before you tap it!"

Sheldon blushed all the way up to his ears. "Amy, I am extremely uncomfortable with the direction this discussion is going."

"And I am tired of it not going anywhere," Amy sighed in resignation. "Maybe I should have stayed with Stuart."

Sheldon started, visibly stung at the finality of her words. "Amy!"

"You know what? Good night Sheldon. And goodbye," Amy said, rising from the couch and gathering her keys from the bowl. "I don't think I can do this anymore."

Sheldon called to her once more before the door quietly closed, leaving him in an empty and all-too-quiet apartment. Sheldon looked around as if lost, then stood up and retrieved a pair of rubber gloves from under the sink so he could clean and think.

When Sheldon finally slept that night, his schedule having been thrown off completely, he dreamt of a quiet, watchful girl with cobalt eyes and short fringy hair whose breathy laugh tickled his ears. "Whitney," he called out in his sleep, "she left me, Whitney. I'm all alone…"


	4. Chapter 4

Cht 4

_You're barely waking  
and I'm tangled up in you_

Over the next few weeks, Sheldon settled into an Amy free schedule once again. The guys noticed he was despondent over him and Amy not working out, but no one knew quite what to say to Sheldon to bring him back to himself. Cantankerous, exacting and self-centered as he may sometimes be, things weren't the same without him. Leonard and the boys found themselves filling empty silences with random factoids and trying to start arguments over the merits of DC over Marvel, but to no avail. Penny even tried to get him to talk about his feelings, but was only rewarded with a semi-snide remark about hippies. It still didn't even sound like the old Sheldon, but she was at a loss as to what to do. She tried leaving cocoa at his door one night, and apple cider with cinnamon sticks the next night, but he had taken to going to bed even earlier than usual and sometimes would stop in the middle of dinner to get up and go to his room.

After many tense, whispered conversations, the general consensus was to leave him alone until he worked himself out of his funk. Leonard and Penny each kept hoping that he would eventually give in and come to one of them to talk. Penny felt sure that if he didn't ask Leonard for advice, he would come to her. They were nearly at the point of breaking down and calling Mrs. Cooper when Sheldon finally unstuck himself, or rather Whitney did it for him.

He had cocooned himself in his bed as usual, a luminous fish glowing on his bedside table, when a loud thump overhead jarred him awake.

"Danger! Danger!" he yelled. Looking around, he saw no immediate threat and slowly came back to himself. He listened intently for a moment ,cataloging the sounds in his apartment to try and gauge what woke him. He heard Leonard slowly resume snoring, followed by a soft thump from above his head.

Sheldon glanced at the clock and slid hastily out of bed, wondering what his neighbor could be doing up at this ungodly hour. He belted his robe over his Tuesday pajamas and slid his feet into his Superman slippers, before padding quickly upstairs.

S``````````W

Whitney raised her head from the floor where she had landed when she fell out of bed. _Knock knock knock!_ "Whitney!" _Knock knock knock!_ "Whitney!" _Knock knock knock!_ "Whitney!" she heard in a stage whisper. Whitney rose on wobbly legs and rubbed a shaky hand over her face before trying to smooth her hair down. She wrapped a deep blue kimono-style robe over her naked body and shuffled to the door.

"Sheldon?" she asked, her voice raspy and thick.

"Whitney! Are you alright?" Sheldon asked hesitantly, before deciding that the question was moot. Before she could even respond, he changed tactics. "May I come in?"

"Ah, um…sure," she said, clutching the robe together across her chest. "You can have a seat now, I actually have chairs."

Sheldon made a spectacular show of trying out both chairs and every cushion of the couch, before settling in the far right cushion, just as he did in his own apartment. Whitney chose the opposite end of the couch, switching on the lamp behind her on the end table, grabbing an emerald green throw and draping it over herself as he gazed intently at her. He noted her red-rimmed eyes in the soft lamp light. Her nose was swollen and her face was slightly blotchy as though she had been crying.

"If you don't mind my asking," Sheldon said, turning to face her more fully, "what is wrong?"

"Ah, I had a bad dream," she sighed, sniffing a little. "It happens sometimes, usually when there's a lot going on and I get pretty stressed. I guess starting a new job and moving to a new place has finally taken its toll."

"So how often do you intend on waking me up like this?" Sheldon ventured.

"Like what? How did I wake you?" said Whitney, clearly nonplussed. _Ohh great! What had he heard?_

"Why thumping around up here, of course!" Sheldon said, as though stating the obvious.

"Oh," Whitney groaned, unconsciously rubbing her arm. "I fell out of bed. Sorry, I guess your room is right under mine."

"Fell out of bed?!" Sheldon said, sliding over and pulling up her robe sleeve to take a look. Sure enough, a large red spot showed where she had obviously hit the floor quite hard. "You could have broken something." He released her arm more gingerly that he had taken it, marveling as an afterthought that he had touched her at all.

"I'm fine," she said, trying to shift the attention from herself. "I'm sorry I woke you though."

Sheldon would have none of it, however. He had felt the tremor run through her and finally realized the haunted look in her eyes for what it was. "What were you dreaming about?" he asked quietly.

Whitney took a deep breath and let it out before answering. "Nothing, just—"

"'Nothing' indeed! Something had you rolling out of bed in the middle of the night waking me out of a dead sleep thinking you were being attacked."

"Look, I just relive a lot of the things I've seen and—wait, you thought I was being attacked and you ran up here?"

"Well yes."

"That was pretty brave. Most people would just cower in their beds, or call the cops and let them deal with it. Very few people run toward danger; believe me, I know."

"Be that as it may," Sheldon said, waving off her mention of his heroic tendency. "If you are having nightmares and reliving trauma in them, that is a clear sign that you are not well." Whitney snorted at this and teared up. "You should be getting help."

"I am getting help Sheldon!" Whitney's voice trembled. "I know I'm broken. I don't need you to tell me. It's just that this kind of thing takes a while to fix, if it can be fixed at all!" She broke down at that, burying her face in the back of the couch and giving in to the shakes. She did not see Sheldon raise his hand tentatively, only to drop it a moment later. She felt him rise off the couch and the rejection that came with it. But instead of hearing the door, she heard him rustling around in her kitchen, clinking china and opening and shutting cabinets, then messing around with the stove. She was too forlorn to turn and see what he was doing, but minutes later she heard the tea kettle whistling and started upright as a tissue was proffered right under her nose while she sat hanging her head.

"Thank you," she said stuffily, dabbing at her eyes and nose. Sheldon handed her a cup and saucer, which she took gratefully. "Sheldon, you didn't have to do that."

"I did," he replied matter-of-factly. "It's a non-optional social convention. When someone is upset you offer them a hot beverage. Usually when I am in the depths of despair I like hot cocoa or if my whole world has been uprooted, I like cider with cinnamon sticks, but you had none, so I made tea instead."

Whitney managed a watery smile at this.

"But you should know, Whitney that you are not broken, whatever you might think," Sheldon shook his head earnestly, capturing her eyes with his solemn gaze. "All heroes have traumas in their past that revisit them. Bruce Wayne and his parents' death, Peter Parker and his guilt over his uncle dying, the list goes on."

"I'm not a hero, Sheldon," Whitney said morosely. "I certainly don't feel like one."

"Well, neither do they," Sheldon continued, unabated. "Heroes never feel brave, they simply do what has to be done because no one else can or will. You've shown that even in a paintball mission. I can imagine it is much the same in your military life."

"Sheldon, I'm pretty sure none of your super heroes have scars."

"Of course they do!" he replied emphatically. "Perhaps not Superman because he cannot be harmed by anything from Earth, but all of the X-Men are nothing but mutated humans. They would scar. As would Iron Man, who is also a mere man with a radioactive cell in his chest. He has a gaping wound there. You have nothing like that."

Whitney laughed grudgingly, conceding that he was correct. She reached over and grasped the hand that rested on his thigh. "Thanks Sheldon. I mean it." She felt him stiffen up and jerked her hand back, remembering Amy's actions at their party a few weeks ago. "Sorry, I forgot you don't like to be touched."

He opened his mouth to say something, but her next words stopped him cold. "I don't really like people to touch me either. A casual handshake is one thing, but I have to really trust someone before I can tolerate anything else, you know?"

"I just don't like germs," he said, remembering how he had just lifted her sleeve barely an hour before, and how she had clasped his hand in gratitude. She was quite upset however, but Sheldon Cooper filed this knowledge away in the hopes that he could start a social experiment with Whitney Ballard. He wanted to see if she would accept his touch when she was calmer, happier, and aware of her surroundings. He wanted to know if she trusted him enough to let him.

"Whitney, " he said, breaking the small silence that had drifted between them while he made his hypothesis and started planning tests to run. "Would you like to come downstairs and eat dinner with us later this evening? Wednesday night is Halo night, and we'll be having Thai again."

"Sure, Sheldon," Whitney smiled genuinely at the invitation. "I think I'd like that."

"Excellent," Sheldon replied and launched himself off the couch. "I'm going to go see if I can get a REM cycle in before it's time for me to get up and get ready for work. Good night!" And with that, Sheldon exited her apartment, leaving Whitney feeling jittery for a whole other reason while her tea slowly got cold.


	5. Chapter 5

Cht 5

_I find I'm scared to know  
I'm always on your mind_

Late that afternoon Whitney came into the lobby and found Leonard checking the mail with a bag of take-out food on the table beside him.

"Hey there," she greeted, slipping off her aviator sunglasses and hanging them from the open collar of her polo shirt. "This is convenient. I've been wanting to talk to you about Sheldon."

"Oh boy," said Leonard, tucking the mail in the bag and taking it to the stairs. "What's he done now?"

"Oh nothing," she said quickly. "It's just, I actually kicked back and read through that neighbor agreement deal over lunch today, and I've got to say it raises some questions about that loopy little guy."

Leonard rolled his eyes as he started to trudge up the steps. "You know you really don't have to sign that."

"Oh I know," Whitney said, trailing after him. "At first I just wanted to have some fun with him and see how long I could drag it out, but now I don't really want to do that to him."

"Oh god no!" Leonard scoffed. "He'd probably implode. You can just tell him no and let him sulk for a while. He'll probably try to blow you up with his mind, but since that won't work he'll give up and start ignoring your existence."

"But I am going to sign it," Whitney cut in. "Most of it is pretty straightforward and understandable. No crazy smells or sounds emanating from my apartment so that it affects him in his…that's actually just being neighborly anyway. I just wondered why I would need to give him a ride if no one else can. Does he not have a car?"

Leonard stopped on the second floor landing and turned to look at Whitney.

"Sheldon doesn't even have a license, and you don't want him in your car. It's like having a driver's exam every time you get in. You have to make sure everyone's buckled up, make sure your mirrors are adjusted, the air can't be too cool or too hot, it can't be blowing directly on him, you can't play the radio. There are a million Sheldon-y things that will drive you crazy, never mind that he criticizes every turn and monitors how fast you're going worse than my aunt Mildred."

"Yeah, I have noticed he's a tad neurotic, but all that control freak stuff is just so he can feel safe for whatever reason. The appropriate question is: why doesn't he feel safe?"

Leonard's brows furrowed. He actually never wondered _why_ Sheldon was the way he was; he just always focused on Sheldon being coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs and bucked his crazy system whenever he could.

"Besides," Whitney continued. "He's light years beyond some of the people I've deal with. You think Sheldon's bad, try an OCD drill sergeant. We labeled everything, color-coded it, and cleaned everything with bleach before we turned it back in at the end of the cycle."

"That actually sounds quite a lot like Sheldon," Leonard mused, trying to picture Sheldon in a drill sergeant's hat. It was surprisingly easy to do. Leonard trudged off toward the stairs again and continued to their floor.

"Yeah, so whatever his issues are I've seen way worse. He's just a little rusty with the social skills. At least I know if I tilt my mirror wrong I won't get smoked for it. I doubt he'd ever have me on the ground doing push-ups and grass drills, motivators, and god knows what all else for it. He's just quirky, that's all. And if he can't drive himself I don't mind taking him somewhere or doing something for him."

"Ha! Just whatever you do, don't expect Sheldon to go out of his way for you in return. He doesn't think like that." Whitney frowned at Leonard's back. _Sheldon must not have mentioned last night's events to his roommate_, she mused. Secretly, she was thankful he hadn't, but the way Sheldon had taken care of her went above and beyond anything he required in his agreement. Sure, the passages pertaining to alien invasions weren't likely to happen…ever…so most of what he required that did exist in the realm of possibility was perfectly reasonable.

"Oh and by the way, when we get in here just make sure you don't sit in Sheldon's spot," Leonard warned, cutting into her thoughts. "There's a whole long-winded explanation as to why it's his, but suffice to say that's the center of his little Sheldon-sized cosmos. He's actually called it his point 0,0,0,0 in time and space."

"Like the origin point on a Cartesian plane?" Whitney smiled, rolled her eyes and shook her head. _What a character…_

"Exactly!" said Leonard, a grudgingly affectionate smile on his face as he unlocked the door. When they entered, Penny and Raj were already seated on the couch and Sheldon was typing away at his desk. He turned when they came in and he smiled at Whitney.

"Oh Whitney, glad you could make it. I took the liberty of printing out some notes and background on Halo if you would like to create a character and play with us. You could play on Raj's and my team so I could show you the ropes, as it were."

"Um, that's okay I have a character actually. I used to play downrange sometimes with the guys. Or on staff duty with whoever my duty runner was for the night. It could get pretty boring sometimes having to stay awake all night."

"Whomever," Sheldon corrected.

"Yeah that," said Whitney, unperturbed. She smiled at Penny though, as the girl rolled her eyes behind Sheldon's back.

As they settled in to eat their take-out Thai, Sheldon rolled his desk chair over for Whitney to sit in. Whitney saw the way Penny's eyebrows winged up at this, but said nothing.

"Penny you're in my spot," Sheldon said simply. With a roll of her eyes, Penny slid out of the right cushion and into the middle.

"Must be nice having your center be something that simple," Whitney supplied, garnering looks from everyone in the room as they tucked in to their respective dishes.

"Oh it is," Sheldon replied with a sincere smile. Whitney made a note to try to make him smile more often. "No matter how far away I get, or whatever happens, I always know it's here waiting for me. Perfectly molded to me at the perfect point in the room, at the perfect temperature."

"I get that. It's like your anchor," Whitney countered as she smiled back. "I wish I had that. All the moving and deploying, redeploying, traveling for training… I've always felt uprooted and sort of cast to the winds. I have no point of origin."

Whitney looked around in the awkward silence that followed. Sheldon was amiably chewing and nodding, but everyone else was looking back at her speculatively. _Woo good job, way to go Whit_, she thought.

"So um…where is everyone else?" she asked, searching for a new topic.

"Oh, ah, Howard and Bernie are having brisket with his mother tonight," Leonard supplied. "The elder Mrs. Wolowitz had her varicose veins lasered and she offered to make dinner in exchange for a ride. Plus she hasn't quite cut Howard's umbilical cord yet."

This earned a snort from Raj's corner, where he was quietly eating while waiting for the wine he had brought to take effect so he could talk with females present.

No one mentioned Amy, Whitney noticed, and she wondered why.

"So Whitney," Penny piped up, "Leonard says you have a contract job here in Pasadena. What do you do there?"

"Oh, I'm an all source analyst," she replied. "It's not exactly what I did in the Army, but it's close enough that I can cross over into that field."

"What's an all source analyst do?" Leonard put in.

"Basically we take all the reporting from different intel sources and look for patterns," she answered. "We just try to connect all the dots and make sure that information gets filtered up to the proper channels."

"So you're actually in intelligence," smirked Penny, "go figure you wound up here."

"Ha, ha, yeah!" Whitney said amused at the irony. "We were like the Geek Squad of the Army. Now I'm just doing the same sort of thing on the civilian side of the house. Which, incidentally, now that I think of it…why exactly were you on the watchlist there, Dr. Cooper?"

Sheldon glanced abruptly in her direction and ducked his face down toward his plate again, but not before Whitney detected a twitch.

"No reason. Why do you ask?"

"Sheldon, I have questioned a lot of liars in my time," said Whitney catching his eye and raising a brow. "You have more tells than a first-time poker player with a royal flush. And my system shows me a daily update of people on the list in the area. You just dropped off the list a couple weeks ago. So spill. What did you do?"

"Ah, he actually hacked into a government supercomputer and started scouting around Craigslist for some uranium," Leonard supplied happily, "and Homeland Security called his mother."

"You WHAT?!" Whitney shrieked.

"Oh it wasn't as dire as all that," Sheldon said testily. "I simply wanted a radioactive tracer for a card trick. There was no need to call my mother."

"A card trick? Is that geek speak for something?"

"No," said Penny as she chewed on her dumpling. "Howard stumped him with a magic trick and he was trying to figure out how Howard knew which card people picked."

Sheldon, looking extremely disgruntled with the direction of the conversation, piped up, "so enough about me. Whitney, you said you don't do exactly the same thing as you did in the Army, so what did you do before?"

Whitney smiled evilly, "I was an interrogator. Still intel, but a different branch of it."

"Wow," Penny marveled. "You must have had to deploy quite a bit for that, huh?"

"Yeah, it's sort of impossible to do that kind of job from here. As an analyst though, I can track reports from all corners of the world."

"I'm not on your watchlist am I," Raj suddenly spoke up.

"Well, that came out of nowhere," said Whitney. "Did your wine finally kick in or something? And no, for the record you're not. Should you be, and is there something I don't know?" she asked, leveling her gaze at him with a smile.

"No," he said nervously, "it's just that I'm brown and I talk funny."

"Ha!" Whitney crowed. "That doesn't make a difference. Sheldon's white and he _was_ on it for crying out loud. Besides, you don't look, sound or smell like an insurgent. Trust me."

"Smell?" said Penny wrinkling her nose. "Ugh, don't tell me."

"Believe me, you don't want to know."

"So you said you played Halo some while you were overseas," Leonard said as he started collecting empty containers and clearing the coffee table. Sheldon took off to the bathroom, and Raj kicked back on the couch.

"Have you played Halo 4?"

"I actually have a little bit when we got back here. We just got back in June and I started ACAPing almost immediately. Then I was on terminal leave for a couple of months, interviewing and getting everything ready to move out here, so on my down time I'd play."

"ACAPing?"

"Basically outprocessing from the Army."

With that, Whitney rose and returned Sheldon's chair to his desk while Penny and Leonard finished clearing the food away. She then slid into the floor and grabbed a game controller from the XBOX and assumed her game playing position, stretched out on her back with her ankles crossed. Raj tossed her a pillow from the couch. As she stuck it under her head and thanked him, Sheldon came traipsing back down the hall from washing his hands and hesitated in the doorway. He watched as Whitney tossed Raj a game controller and settled on her pillow.

Then Penny walked by and glanced at Sheldon, standing still as he watched from the shadow of the hall. Without a word, he continued into the living room and settled into his spot again. Penny made it a point from that time on to watch Sheldon a little more closely around their new friend. Her little whackadoodle might actually have a 'deal' after all…


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: Remember my warning that the rating was for future chapters? We've hit those chapters. Nothing major, just a little canapé before the salad round. We've got a while til the main course.**

Cht 6

_Don't stop here  
I lost my place  
I'm close behind_

In the days and weeks that followed, Whitney lost herself in work and routine—namely her work and Sheldon's routine. With the exception of her first drill weekend with her unit, Whitney had spent most of her off hours in the vicinity of 4A. She was happy with her new friends, and was made to understand that she was welcome in the evenings to partake in everything from nights out at the Cheesecake Factory to Wii Bowling night.

Bowling seemed to be just one of the many things Sheldon Cooper excelled at, along with spouting off random facts about this theorem and that axiom, multiple universes and European physicists who lectured on sub-particles. It made her dizzy, but then if he heard half the acronyms she could spout off in a one minute span, he'd go cross-eyed too. Intel work had its own jargon. She had plenty of things she could claim to be adept at, and if Sheldon kept up her tutelage, bowling would be one more.

At first no one had believed when she told them she couldn't bowl, but they wound up opting for real bowling tonight, and she had proven her stance was true. She flat could not do it. She asked for bumper guards, and they waved her off and said she'd be fine. She asked for one of those ramp things shaped like a dinosaur, and they wouldn't have it. Then she got up to take her first turn and the ball went backwards. Penny and Bernadette tried to stifle their laughs, bless them, but the guys just sat there slack-jawed as the ball rolled to a stop at Howard's feet.

Whitney managed a sheepish, "I told you so" as Sheldon reached down and picked up the ball. He brought it to Whitney, who blushed profusely and thanked him. When she reached out her hand to take it though, he shocked her by taking her hand and sliding her fingers into the holes. Whitney's breath caught in her throat and she nearly choked. Keeping his hand over hers, he curled the ball into her arm and with his other hand at her hip, gently turned her back to face the lane. She let out a long, shaky breath.

"Be the ball," he said, his breath tickling the hair near her ear. _Lord, did he even realize what he was doing to her?_ She almost turned her face into his, but she didn't want to alarm him when he was already this close and actually making contact. Go figure the first person she trusted enough to get close, didn't even _like_ to get close.

"Draw the ball back to a 45 degree angle from your hip as you walk up," Sheldon was saying as he gently released the hand that held the ball. "In those last few steps, swing it forward an additional 25 degrees, making 70 degrees total and let the ball go. Aim for the ball to go straight over the center arrow on the floor and try not to twist your hand as you release or it will put a spin on the ball and we don't want that."

As almost an afterthought he let go of her hip, but he stayed close behind her and just a bit to the left as she retraced her steps and tried again. She still twisted her hand a bit, sending the ball spinning to the right, but it took out three pins and stayed out of the gutter. Whitney was so elated that she spun and nearly hugged Sheldon before she remembered. _Sheldon hates touching_. Instead she tried for a high-five, which he returned smiling. _There. Not so bad. Casual touching is okay if he's ready for it_.

For the rest of the evening Sheldon coached her from the side and her game markedly improved. He would step up every so often to correct her stance or her grip, and every touch sent flutters through her belly in response.

S``````````W

And that is what brought her to this point. She should have been in her tub, kicked back with a glass of wine, bubbles up to her chin, breathing in the relaxation that was steeped into her lavender vanilla bath gel. Instead she had all of the above—except the key ingredient, which was the relaxation itself.

Without any provocation her mind drifted to the lanky form of her neighbor with his deft, dexterous fingers. The fullness of his bottom lip, how his mouth curved into that sweet guileless smile. And the thing that got her to begin with: that cool blue gaze. _Yep_, Whitney groaned, _I'm in serious trouble_. _Big, full-blown crush on a neighbor that has more innocence now than you did at 14_. _And what would you do, corrupt him completely? Nice, normal guys don't know how to handle your baggage. Hell, even the guys who have been through the same thing don't know what to do with a girl who has your baggage… If he knew everything you'd seen and done, he'd turn tail and run_.

With a frustrated sigh, she flicked the tub stopper with her toe and drained her glass even as the water drained out of the tub. It may have been that last glass of wine loosening her inhibitions, but when she finally crawled into bed her fingers languidly traced a path down her torso under the covers and found that sweet spot that made her mouth his name. In the dark, in her mind, those fingers were his.

* * *

Sheldon, meanwhile, had problems of his own. He shifted out of the mummy position in his sleep, sheets and blankets tangled in his feet as he writhed back and forth. Moaning aloud, he woke with a start and sat bolt upright in bed. Clutching the covers with one hand, he raised them and hazarded a glance at his lap.

"Oh dear lord," he groaned, and collapsed back on his pillow. He could no longer deny it. He definitely did not have an alien parasite. He had not felt this way since Uhura's and Spock's coupling in the new _Star Trek_ movie. And before that… he couldn't even remember._ What has that little vixen done_, he mused.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: Fair warning if you are easily triggered by assault/non-con, tread carefully. That said, our boy comes out a hero in this...oh and there's some pretty dicey language and some f-bombs. Blame the muse, but sh*t just got real.**

Cht 7

_I worry I won't see your face  
Light up again_

_Even the best fall down sometimes,_  
_Even the wrong words seem to rhyme_

"Leonard, I'm telling you, something is up," Penny said as they ascended the stairs to her apartment one evening. "Why else would he give me the third degree about some guy Whitney told me she's going out with tonight?"

"Because it means there's an unknown variable thrown into his constant universe," Leonard reasoned. "Sheldon just hates change, and if Whitney's not there tonight it will throw off his whole schedule; he's gotten used to her being around. All that's going to happen is he'll be damned unpleasant for the rest of the evening."

"Leonard, I swear, for someone who's such a freaking genius, you can be really obtuse sometimes," Penny shook her head.

Penny's head snapped up as she heard someone coming down the stairs ahead of them. "Oh Whitney hi! Wow, you look amazing."

The trio stopped on the third floor landing where they met. Leonard grudgingly admitted to himself that if Sheldon really did have a deal, it would be easy to have one for Whitney. Meanwhile, Penny's keen fashion eye took in Whitney's dress, a nude body-hugging number that wrapped around her shoulders and accentuated every petite curve. Her blue eyes smoldered with smoky shadow and she topped off the entire look with a nude and black patent spectator heel that had Penny practically salivating for the credit card she had nearly maxed out already.

"Thanks," Whitney replied unconsciously rubbing her hands against the stretchy fabric. "My palms are sweating like crazy and I feel faintly queasy to be honest."

"Oh sweetie you'll be fine!" Penny soothed. "First dates are always the worst, but if you need me too I'll text you about half an hour in, and if it's not going well by that point you can beg off and say the text was from a friend who needs you desperately, and you have to leave."

"I would really appreciate that," Whitney said pleadingly. "I hate blind dates, and I barely know the girl who set me up with him, so I don't know about her judgment either. I've got to get out of here though, or I'm going to be late and he's supposed to be here soon! Thanks for the out. I'll text back if I don't need it."

"Aw, well good luck!" Penny winked and watched Whitney go, then turned to Leonard. "If Sheldon saw her in that get-up, he would bust something, and I don't mean a gasket."

S`````````W

As it happened, Sheldon spent another evening in, alone. Penny and Leonard were already ensconced in Penny's apartment—probably having coitus—and Howard and Bernadette were out having dinner with Raj and Howard's cousin Leah, who had flown in for a visit. Since it was a Friday night, Sheldon was consoling himself with orange chicken from Szechuan Palace and a game of Super Mario Brothers on his ancient Nintendo system.

He heard voices, his keen Vulcan hearing picking up the dulcet tones of his upstairs neighbor mingled with the deeper tones of what must be her date. A glance at the clock told him it was 8:30, which even Sheldon's limited knowledge of social conventions told him was a bit early for a date to be ending. So when he heard Whitney's voice raise an octave and a sudden thump against the wall of their apartment, Sheldon rose, pausing the game so he could hear more effectively.

"I said no, dammit!" he heard Whitney as the sounds continued, followed by a grunt.

"Oooh you little bitch!" growled the male voice, punctuated with a sharp crack and another thump.

S``````````W

Whitney hit the floor, and shook her head once as her vision went fuzzy. She didn't feel the sting of the slap, but the vague awareness that somehow the asshole had landed a blow. Just as suddenly as she hit the floor, a door opened and she heard Mike again.

"Look punk, just mind your business. We're just having a little disagreement-" and as soon as the words left his mouth, Mike's legs tripped as he was shoved over her prone body and went airborne. He hit the top two stairs and rolled the rest of the way down.

"Ow! God dammit, you little fucker!" he yelled, bracing himself with the handrail as he limped upwards again. Penny's door swung open and she and Leonard came running out. If Whitney hadn't been on the floor in pain, she might have been rolling in laughter. Penny was wearing her pink bathrobe and there was Leonard gaping at the scene in Penny's matching lilac robe. Sheldon stood over Whitney, his eyes not leaving Mike's.

At the entrance of the two newcomers, though, Mike simply swiped the back of his hand across his now swollen mouth and spat on the carpeted floor. "Fuck it. I don't need this, and you're not worth it," he pointed at Whitney. And favoring his injured leg, he limped around the corner, his curses fading out as he left.

"Do you believe me now?" Penny asked Leonard as Whitney stumbled to get up.

"Yeah, I kinda do," Leonard marveled.

Strong hands grasped Whitney's upper arms and righted her, leaning her gently against the wall where she flattened her hands to support herself. Her legs were too shaky still, and all she could do was stand gaping at the others, her chest heaving with shallow breaths.

"But I'm home," was all she could say, "I should be safe here." And with that, her voice broke. She stopped talking and just stared, silent tears trailing down her cheeks.

Sheldon took in the cold, clammy skin, rapid breathing and her dilated pupils and kept his grip firm as he guided her into the apartment. Penny and Leonard followed closely behind. They said not a word as Sheldon lowered Whitney into his spot and wrapped her with the throw that was draped over the back of the couch.

"I'm gonna make some cider," he said, crossing to the kitchen, his Texas twang belying his emotions as he jerkily opened a canister of cinnamon sticks. Once the jar was opened, he took a slow, deep breath and steadied himself.

Leonard watched his friend's back as he exhaled and stood amazed at the fact that his favorite frustrating robot was a real boy after all. In the hallway Sheldon's face had looked murderous—until he looked down at Whitney. In that one unguarded instance, anger gave way to concern and something approaching adoration. Leonard was now sure of it. But what in the world had brought it on?

"Whitney, what happened?" Leonard asked as Penny tucked the blanket more securely around the shaken girl. Penny removed Whitney's shoes and brought her feet up gently. Whitney took the cue from Penny's guiding hands and tucked her feet under her on the cushion.

"He…he, um, tried…" Whitney's voice was still shaking as she fought for control again. She tried to slow her breathing and clasped her hands together under the throw to try and stop the shaking. Then she started again. "I wasn't having a great time at dinner, so I took your text and begged off. He brought me back here and told me I should blow off whoever needed me and we should just go upstairs." At this her voice hitched, but she took another steadying breath and reached out of the blanket to take the cup Sheldon was holding out for her. Taking a careful sip, she thanked him and continued. "When we started up the stairs, his hands were freaking everywhere and I told him to stop and just leave. I said I was going back to my room, and he could hit the bricks, but he wouldn't stop. Then he slammed me against the wall and I kneed him in the jewels. All that did was piss him off though, and he backhanded me."

Penny tsked as she gingerly touched the side of Whitney's mouth and cheek, which were bright red and still swelling. Leonard grabbed a bag of mixed vegetables out of the freezer and held it out for Whitney. She thanked him and settled her cup of cider on the end table.

Sheldon spoke up for the first time, "I'll call the police."

"Wait! What?" Whitney spluttered.

"What's confusing about that?" Sheldon questioned, looking first at Leonard, then Penny. "That menace clearly assaulted and threatened you, and he deserves it. I would say we should let Penny go Nebraskan native on him, but we'll see if the authorities are effective enough without emasculating him completely. However gratifying that might be…" he added. With that, Sheldon picked up the phone and started dialing.

"Sweetie, I never thought I'd say it, but Sheldon's right," Penny said, stroking Whitney's arm. There were bruises forming there too, and Penny was certain it wasn't from Sheldon's hands. The finger marks were thick and short. "He hit you, he wasn't stopping when you told him to, and who knows what might have happened if Sheldon hadn't shown up."

The sense of this seeped into Whitney's shocked system and something in her gently unfolded at the thought that Sheldon had indeed come at the perfect time. She had been left wounded and had frozen at a time when she had needed her wits about her. That had never happened before, but the one prevailing thought was that this was home, this was not a combat zone, and she _should_ be safe. It shattered her to think that even here she needed her guard up. _Thank god for Sheldon though_, she thought.

It took some convincing, but after the police had come and taken their reports, Penny, Leonard and Sheldon had convinced her to stay the night in 4A. Once that battle was won, they fought a brief one over whether Whitney would sleep in Leonard's bed or on the couch. But Whitney had won that one, and curled up with her head on a pillow in Sheldon's spot.

Later in the privacy of her apartment, Penny and Leonard would discuss at length the fact that Sheldon had not only defended her, fought off an attacker, but also placed her in his spot of all places, and then took care of her afterwards.

S``````````W

Somewhere in the night, Sheldon's sensitive hearing alerted him again. He rose, this time silently, and padded out to the living room where he saw Whitney thrashing about in her borrowed Flash t-shirt. The throw had been kicked to the floor, and she was whimpering pitifully.

"We have to break contact; there's too many of them," she was saying. Of all the things he knew, Sheldon did not know what to do with this. Missy had been a sleepwalker, so he knew not to wake one, but this was altogether different and out of his realm. He reached out a tentative hand and gently shook her shoulder, hoping when she roused, she would be cognizant enough to know where she was.

He shook her twice more before she woke. She landed on her feet, beside the couch, hands up defensively and eyes wide. A sheen of sweat glistened over her in the dim light and Sheldon tried to ignore the way the t-shirt clung to her damp skin.

"Whitney?" he asked gently.

"Sheldon?" she said tremulously. "Sheldon." Whitney dropped her hands to her sides and then raised them again to rub them together.

"Do you know where you are?" he asked slowly. He stood still so as not to alarm her, but he wanted to grasp her and hold her close. She had proven to be open to his touching her, but he inferred that now may be an exception to that rule.

"Yes, I'm coming back to earth now I think," she said, as her legs collapsed under her and she landed back on the couch. She wrapped her arms around her and hunched over her knees. "Sorry I woke you."

She wiped at her cheek and sniffed. "I seem to have a bad habit of doing that, Sheldon, I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize," Sheldon said, sitting down next to her. The middle cushion felt weird, but he was more concerned about his friend. The way Sheldon considered it, she needed the stability more right now. It was what moved him to put her there earlier. If Whitney needed an anchor, she could borrow his. Borrowing from that premise, he surmised that he might have a way to make her feel safer as well.

"I think you might be better off in a bed after all," he began, holding up a hand when she started to protest. "No, listen. I have the perfect solution."

With that, he stood and offered her his hand. When she placed her fingers in his, he curled his hand around hers gently and led her down the hallway. Instead of continuing to Leonard's room, however, Sheldon led her to his bed and eased her down onto it.

"Sheldon I can't kick you out of your bed," she tried again.

"Nonsense," Sheldon shushed her. He nudged her back onto his pillow and began tucking her in like a mummy. "You have a night light so you can see everything, there's a lightsaber under the right side of the bed, and you can borrow my 24-hour bag in case of an emergency. It's the black knapsack in the closet labeled, '24-Hour Bag'. I have a back-up bag in the living room, so I don't mind loaning you mine. Do you want me to sing 'Soft Kitty'?"

"'Soft Kitty'?"

"It's a song my mother sings when I'm sick. I can sing it to you if you like. I think traumatized is a kind of sick."

Whitney gave a wan smile. "Sure, why not?"

"_Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur. Happy kitty, sleepy kitty, purr, purr, purr_," Sheldon sang.

"Sheldon?"

"Yes?"

"I just—will you stay here? Please?" Their eyes met in the soft light, blue to blue. And gingerly, Sheldon's fingers ghosted over the fringe of hair that fell over her brow.

"Sure."

When Whitney threw the covers back and scooted over, Sheldon's self-consciousness reared its head and he slid awkwardly in beside her. Then she curled her tiny frame up next to his body, her face pressed to his arm as she draped hers over his waist. Sheldon let out the breath he had not realized he was holding and let the warmth steal over him, very dimly aware that this was highly unusual in his paradigm. He was not only touching, but cuddling. There was a person in his room. In a very few minutes, however, he was fast asleep and none of it mattered.


	8. Chapter 8

Cht 8

_Out of the doubt that fills your mind  
I finally find you and I collide _

Sheldon woke exactly ten seconds before his alarm and deftly reached over the sleeping girl to disable it before it could go off and startle her. Chagrined at his all too human reaction to waking curled up behind a woman, he then eased out of bed and grasping his robe in front of him, shuffled quickly into the bathroom to resolve his current state.

Whitney woke not long after, feeling the draft at her back and blearily looked over her shoulder. No Sheldon. She did, however, hear the shower running and assumed that he was in it. Groaning, she rolled over and put her face in his pillow, inhaling the clean masculine scent. _Best night's sleep in eons_, she mused, lifting her head and sniffing delicately at the new smells of coffee and frying bacon now wafting through the apartment.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stepped quietly to the door. When she came down the hallway she heard voices talking in hushed undertones, which stopped at once as she rounded the corner to find Leonard and Penny in the kitchen. Penny was at the stove, frying up bacon and omelets while Leonard sat at the island with a cup of coffee in his hand.

"Oh Whitney," Leonard spoke up, "how are you feeling?"

"Better," Whitney smiled grimly, "way better."

"Cup of coffee, sweetie?" said Penny.

"Oh god, most definitely!" Whitney pleaded, as Leonard rose and went to the cupboard over the coffee pot.

"How do you like it?" Leonard asked.

"Sweet and light."

"Speaking of sweet and light—" Penny began, as Leonard desperately tried to shush her. "What's going on with you and Sheldon?"

"Ahh…what do you mean?" Whitney hedged. "If you mean last night, he was just looking out for me."

"Well, sweetie, last night was just one thing," Penny added as she set the bacon on a paper towel-lined plate. "He's been acting _so_ differently around you and we've never seen him like this. _Ever_."

"It's just…he doesn't exhibit nurturing capabilities for anyone," Leonard contributed as he handed Whitney her coffee. "Not even Amy."

"What happened with Amy anyway?" Whitney cut in, trying futilely to change the subject.

"They broke up," said Penny, turning an omelet and trying unsuccessfully to keep it intact. "And that's another thing: they broke up because the relationship wasn't going anywhere."

"To date," Leonard said, "the only one in Sheldon's life who's managed to get between his sheets is…well…you."

"I think those were extenuating circumstances," Whitney said dryly, blowing into her steaming cup.

"You don't understand Sheldon though," Leonard pressed. "He doesn't _do_ extenuating circumstances. He doesn't touch people casually. He doesn't invite _anyone_ over for dinner, and he _never_ lets anyone sit in his spot. That's like the holiest of holies."

"Whitney, sweetie, I don't think you get how monumental it is for Sheldon to show emotion at all—unless he's upset the new comic that he wanted was bought up by someone else, or I forget and leave the tomato on his hamburger. Last night he showed a side of himself that we've never seen in all the years we've known him. Sheldon Cooper doesn't defend anyone, he doesn't get physical, and he's certainly never done anything nurturing unless it was against his will. Heck, Amy had to trick him into caring for her while she was sick!"

Whitney set her cup down. "You know, I don't think you know him at all. He's really a decent human being, and you don't give him credit for being a thinking, feeling person who actually is capable of compassion and caring. He's done so much for me since I got here."

"Yeah, he's got some hang-ups—and boy, don't I know about hang-ups," Whitney laughed mirthlessly. "But he's done so much for me, that I could start feeling like a human being again. He's dried my tears, made me tea. Comforted me when I had nightmares, come running to my aid not once but twice, and _never once_ has he asked me to do a thing for him. Not once!" she said, her voice rising.

"I don't know what Sheldon you know, but the one I know is a good man," Whitney said standing up. "I think there's a lot of depths there that you guys miss because you get so hung up on crazy schedules and germ phobia and whatever other silliness he uses to cover up his insecurities. And I hate to tell you, but you guys might be part of the reason for that. You know, I'm about to deploy again with this new unit in barely a week, and I really hate to think about leaving him behind. He's the best friend I've found here."

Her voice had started shaking so she took a breath and bore down to get the next words out. "I know now that if anything happens to me downrange there is someone else out there, besides my family and my battle buddies, who cares. As hard as it is leaving them behind, it's going to be just as hard to leave him too."

Before she lost it entirely, Whitney turned and snatched up her belongings by the couch that someone had neatly folded and placed on the coffee table. Without a backward glance, she hurried out the door before she erupted in shuddering sobs and traipsed quickly up the stairs before anyone in the halls saw her in nothing but a borrowed t-shirt. Had she glanced at the hallway when she crossed to the couch, she would have seen Sheldon standing rooted to the spot in the doorway, his wet hair tousled and a worried look turning that cool gaze to the turbulent color of the sea.

_S``````````W_

_Knock, knock, knock_. "Whitney!" _Knock, knock, knock_. "Whitney!" _Knock, knock, knock_. "Whitney!"

Whitney stood with her forehead on the door, the reverberations from his knocking vibrating against her as she tried to compose herself. _I cry more in front of this guy that anyone else in my life_, she thought. _It's a wonder he still comes around_. Whitney took a deep breath and opened the door. There stood Sheldon, wet head, slippered feet, and dumbfounded expression. _He must have heard_.

She stepped back and let him in, but instead of sitting as she gestured him over to his preferred spot on her couch, he continued to stand as if he did not know how to take the next step.

"Whitney," he said slowly, "I just heard you say you're deploying again."

Whitney tried to swallow the knot in her throat, but couldn't, so she settled for nodding mutely.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I couldn't, Sheldon," she said achingly. "I didn't know how. I thought about lying and saying it was training or that I was getting sent to Korea, but I don't want to lie to you, and I don't want to bring that into our—paradigm," she finished, thinking quickly. She had almost said _relationship_, but caught herself in time.

"But this is extremely worrying," Sheldon breathed, his forehead wrinkling. "You're the extra dumpling."

"What?"

"Bernadette doesn't eat dumplings. You're the sixth dumpling."

"That is not a clarification, Sheldon. Explain fully," Whitney urged, now more confused than before.

"Every Monday we order Chinese from Szechuan Palace," Sheldon began. "We order a side of dumplings, which come six to a serving. Penny, Leonard, Howard, Raj and I all eat one, and for ages there has been a spare one, which always perplexed me. Bernadette doesn't eat them and Amy hated cabbage, so it always became an issue. Then you came along."

"And I eat dumplings."

"Precisely," Sheldon smiled, now believing that Whitney understood at last.

"Is that your unique way of saying you'll miss me?" Whitney said with an inkling of hope sliding gently through her.

"On the contrary, it is my reasoned argument against why you cannot go," Sheldon said, clasping his hands behind him as if delivering a lecture.

"Really?" Whitney said, the hope dying like a defunct firecracker. "Are you going to try to sell that story to my commander?"

"If need be."

"Sheldon, I can't politely tell the Army 'no' simply because your OCD doesn't allow for odd dumplings. I'm sorry but I have to go."

"But you can't," Sheldon said, his voice taking on a petulant tone. "You just got back!"

"Yes, but that was with my active unit. Had I stayed in the Army with them then I would have had a year of stabilization before I had to go again. But this is a new unit, my guard unit, and it's time for a deployment in their cycle."

"Can't someone else go?"

"No, there are only three of us in my MOS in the whole unit. Sheldon, it's only for three months, it's a short support mission for the regular units that are there, and then I'll be back."

"Three months?!" Sheldon spluttered. "That's 12 dumplings! Three paintball games! 12 Halo nights!"

"And Sheldon I'll make it all up to you when I get back," she cut in before he could continue. As he started listing all the things she'd miss, Whitney felt a pang of longing that threatened to break her. "I'll go to the train store with you—heck, we can take a train trip together if you'd like. I've never been on a train; it's always sounded like fun to me. How's that?"

"You promise?"

"Yes, and I can't text every day, but I can email you every day and we can Skype when our schedules permit. I'll be on the FOB the whole time, so I should be able to keep fairly regular hours, and we'll only have to worry about the time difference."

"Well that certainly sounds reasonable," Sheldon considered. "I could pretend you're attending a SHIELD conference for the World Security Council."

"Of course," Whitney said, letting out a relieved breath, though she had no idea what SHIELD was. "We'll count down the days until I come back from my conference, and you can start a trip itinerary for us. I should get a week of block leave when I get back."

"Oh goody!" Sheldon said, clapping his hands. "You're going to love trains! I just know it! I'll start narrowing down our list of options for tours and oh! I'll need your spare key so I can pack for us while you're gone. This is an experience of a lifetime!"

"Great, Shel," Whitney smiled. "Well, happy planning."

"Oh dear lord!" Sheldon said, paling. "I forgot about work!" He reached out and wrapped both arms around Whitney, practically bouncing with mingled pleasure and anxiety. "I have to finish my morning preparations! My schedule is so far behind I'll have to opt for the middle stall at work to move my bowels…" and with that, Sheldon scampered hastily out of Whitney's apartment leaving her baffled and laughing in the middle of the living room.


	9. Chapter 9

Cht 9

_Even the best fall down sometimes  
Even the stars refuse to shine  
_

Whitney was eight weeks into her deployment, working into the home stretch as she viewed it. They had had a successful mission, made a few friends, and a few memories. Her communication with her friends in California was frequent. Sheldon messaged her daily and they had even had a video chat on Classic Video game night. The whole group sat around the computer, interrupting each other, squabbling about who was smarter, whose work was derivative, and why Spider-Man's webs shoot out his wrists and not from his lower abdomen. Raj insisted his spinnerets should be the same place as a spider's, which launched a twenty-minute debate on adaptation in evolution.

Listening to all the bantering from the guys and Penny was a welcome entertainment. Sheldon wouldn't tell her a thing about the trip he was planning, but he did say that he had another surprise for when she got home. Gauging from everyone else's expressions though, it may be optimistic to say she would love it. When she finally signed off, sighing wistfully at the fact that in just a few more weeks she would be heading back, Whitney still had to chuckle at the chaos that her genius friends had introduced into her life. And she smiled more wistfully as the brightest of them, who held such tenuous order over the group.

She sat out under the stars while her battle buddies smoked, joking about things from back home too. Here the night was blackest and looked so vast. She wondered what Raj saw when he looked up there. Surely he could identify everything he could see with the naked eye. It was his job. Funny part was, Sheldon probably could too, even though it wasn't his line of work. Since he tried to explain all of life through physics, he treated everything in creation like knowing it all _was_ his job.

Berardi, a regular joe from Jersey, piped up cutting into her thoughts, "hey Ballard, how's your new boy toy?"

Whitney chuckled gamely and replied, "he's cooking up something in that big cranium of his. I don't know what he's up to though. We're supposed to take a train trip when we get home, so it might have to do with that."

"You sure he didn't say he wanted to show you his train?" Sykes spoke up, setting the group laughing.

"Those train references are your department aren't they?" Whitney threw back. "Doesn't your wife call you the 'Little Engine that Could'?"

"Ohhhh burn!" chorused the guys as they all laughed.

Sykes laughed along with the group before tossing a rejoinder her way. "Hey I am steady rolling down that track as soon as I get home."

Berardi started to interject when a telltale whistle caught their attention, just as the warning announcement blasted from the intercom overhead.

"Hit the deck!" one of them yelled. The entire group flattened themselves to the ground as a mortar round hissed by not two hundred meters away. It hit their DFAC with an earth shaking boom and as it did, the group scrambled up and started running for a nearby bunker. At a second whistle, Whitney looked up to see what looked like a sparkler flying directly over her head, and she dove again. Another quaking blast and she blacked out.

S``````````W

It was Cheeseburger night and the gang had just returned from the Cheesecake Factory when someone knocked on the door to 4A. Leonard opened the door to find two guys with closely cropped hair and a girl who looked every bit like Rosario Dawson in _Death Proof._

"Hey there," said one of the guys. "Are you Sheldon Cooper?"

"Ah, no," Leonard replied nervously, sizing them up. "Sheldon? Some people here to see you."

He turned and passed Sheldon on the way to the door.

"Who are they?" Sheldon whispered.

"I don't know but they look like they might be after your lunch money," Leonard reasoned.

"Sarcasm?"

"Not sure, actually."

Sheldon stepped to the door and offered a tentative hello.

"Hey," said the apparent spokesman for the group, a ruddy-faced man in his mid-twenties who looked like he might have been the Corn Queen's consort. "I'm Sergeant Mitchell, and this is Specialist Davis and Specialist Contrera. We're from Staff Sergeant Ballard's home unit here in Pasadena."

The significance of this slowly dawned on Sheldon and he lost what little color he had in his face. Blindly he reached for the door to steady himself and caught the edge of it on the second try.

"We're supposed to tell you up front not to panic," Contrera added. "Sergeant Ballard said you probably would."

"Looks like he's already there," smiled Davis. "Look guy, we don't want to worry you, but she has been injured and is already back stateside. She's at Walter Reed though, so we need to get some of her stuff to send there for her."

"Hey man, she's going to be fine, okay?"Contrera said. "My home girl is a fighter, and she's just really banged up. Nothing too serious, man, really. I wouldn't try to steer you wrong."

"Why didn't I hear about this?" Sheldon struggled to speak. "I haven't heard from her for a week!"

"Yeah, well she's been in transition since then," Sergeant Mitchell said calmly. "She had to get MEDEVACed to a bigger hospital and then transferred stateside, so she hasn't exactly been with a phone or her laptop. Since you're not family, you aren't on the Red Cross's call list for next of kin. She did finally get a message out to send us for some of her clothes and said you had a key, and you would need to be told about the situation."

"As far as I know, she sustained a leg injury and a concussion. That's it. And she's already out of the woods as far as the concussion goes, plus she's already had surgery on the leg. Basically what she's looking at is getting med boarded out of the Guard and a long road to recovery from her injuries. She's going to need a lot of help with that, but I'm thinking you'll be up for it."

Sheldon, for once, did not know what to say and nodded numbly as Leonard invited them into the apartment while he searched for the key. Finally finding his voice, Sheldon said glumly, "I'm going to make some tea."

"Hey, that's alright man," Davis spoke up, eyeing Sheldon warily. "We're good."

"I'm making it for me," replied Sheldon as he shuffled to the stove. There was a tense ball in his stomach and his ears were ringing. He wanted to do something with his hands, and they barely cooperated as he drew the tea from the cupboard under the kitchen island and started foraging for a cup. _Injured_, was all he could think. _Concussion. Walter Reed. Surgery_.

Something clicked inside Sheldon's brain and he turned, grabbing up the phone and punching a series of numbers. He waited momentarily after the call connected, silently fuming, nostrils flaring as he listened to a brief recorded after-hours message before a beep sounded.

"This is Dr. Sheldon Cooper, 2311 Los Robles, Apartment 4A," he stated. "I'd like to report a broken elevator in our building and register my displeasure at the fact that it is now 6 years, 4 months, and 5 days since it has stopped working. I am formally requesting that it be fixed; otherwise I may have to report it to the Better Business Bureau, as well as the local housing bureau. Good day."

S``````````W

Whitney stumped slowly through the door as Sergeant Mitchell held it open. Her mother followed closely behind.

"Well, it looks like they'll have your elevator fixed soon, Whit," her mother said, sizing up the construction work that was going on in the lobby. Whitney had inherited her blue eyes and dimply cheeks from her mother, who winked at Sgt. Mitchell before the trio headed upstairs. "You won't be gimping up the stairs too long."

Sgt. Mitchell snickered at her mother's word choice, but wisely said nothing.

"Thanks Mom."

As they reached the fourth floor landing, Sgt. Mitchell stepped over to 4A and quickly rapped on the door before Whitney could ask why.

No sooner did he do this than a thin woman in her mid-40s answered the door. "Hi there," she drawled in a friendly twang. "Can I help y'all?" _Must be Sheldon's mother_, Whitney thought. _Oh lord give me strength, I am not ready for this._

"Yes ma'am," Sgt. Mitchell nodded. "I've brought SSG Ballard back for Sheldon. His friend Leonard called and said that Mr. Cooper was 'broken' and probably needed to see her as soon as we could get her back."

"Well, isn't that sweet!" Mrs. Cooper said, brightening. "Y'all come on in! And thank you so much for your service to this country. I want you to know I pray for our brave men and women nightly that the Good Lord will watch over all y'all. Shelly?! Your soldier friend's here! Leave the train cars!"

By the time the words had left her mouth, Sheldon came racing in wearing PJs and a conductor's cap.

"Whitney!" He wrapped his gangly arms around her and squeezed, nearly knocking her off balance and sending a sharp twinge up her injured leg. She snaked her arms around his waist and held on, suddenly too overcome to care about the witnesses to their awkward display. Peeking through under Sheldon's arm, she could see Penny tearing up as she reached for Leonard's hand. Then Sgt Mitchell cleared his throat and she heard an almost reverent "my, my" from Sheldon's mom.

Whitney pulled back and looked over her shoulder at her own mother, who said nothing, but whose eyes twinkled merrily as she shot a cheeky smile to her daughter. _I will not live this down_, thought Whitney.


	10. Chapter 10

Cht 10

_Out of the back you fall in time  
I somehow find you and I collide _

The trip Sheldon had planned was phenomenal. Even the guys had to admit that it sounded like fun. The Coastal Starlight rail line started in Seattle and ended in Los Angeles, running straight down the coast, and featured not only sleeper cars and a dining car, but a kiddie car with an arcade as well.

He had gotten the trip postponed until Whitney got her cast off, but Sheldon still insisted on learning the physical therapy treatments she would need so he could do them with her even though she would miss her appointment that week. He had endlessly harassed the physical therapist, hounding him with questions about alternate methods and which tools were best, how much pressure to use and whether the equipment was hygienic. Dr. Russell had finally enforced a no-Sheldon policy on Whitney's sessions, but provided her with a chart of exercises for Sheldon to help her with if he promised to stay away and leave the therapist alone.

All the staff at Caltech were convinced he had finally cracked when he put in for vacation without being forced. Worse yet, he had taken to wearing his conductor's cap all the time. Whitney merely shook her head and snickered when she popped in to have lunch with he and the guys from time to time.

Sheldon and Whitney hung out more and more frequently. He helped her with her undergrad classes; she took him to a rifle range to keep his skills sharp. With his help, she had finally bowled a strike that very week.

S``````````````````W

So when the day came that they headed to Seattle and the door closed to apartment 4A, the heated debates began on whether or not Sheldon Cooper would come back a man. Raj, ever the romantic, sided with Penny. They bet against Leonard, Bernadette, and Howard that Sheldon would lay down plastic sheets, use double condoms and urge Whitney to take a thorough cleansing before and after engaging in coitus. Leonard insisted that he would put her to sleep spouting off random facts about trains. Howard disagreed. He swore that Whitney would finally snap after the first hour and a half alone with him and try to dangle him off the back of the caboose. Bernadette, on the other hand, seemed to think Sheldon would be banished to the arcade for the duration of the trip.

None of the above were further from the truth. True to form, Sheldon rattled on about the rail line, trains in general, and his love for them. When he tired of this, he and Whitney both checked out the arcade, which featured classic pinball games, skee ball, and even Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. Whitney was excited to see an old Galaga game there and by dinner time, she and Sheldon both had worked up an appetite gaming.

When Whitney stifled a yawn over dinner, Sheldon shyly told her that the sleeping compartment was double occupancy and that they would be sharing the car. Whitney smiled tiredly and said that was fine.

"Sheldon, I don't think I trust anyone else more," Whitney smiled. "I just hope I don't have any more nightmares, that's all."

"Oh, I'm far too excited to sleep," Sheldon said gamely. "I'll be watching the lights as we pass through all the cities and towns. I may even go back to the arcade and play Mrs. Pac-Man this time."

Instead, Whitney suggested they both take a hot cocoa to go so they could watch the lights stream by out the window from their sleeper car.

S``````````````````W

Sheldon sat on the edge of his bed, holding his cup in his lap, staring out at the darkness punctuated by ships' lights off the coast. Whitney set her cup on the floor and moved to sit next to him. Without speaking, she glanced at him and smiled, taking his hand before leaning into him. She laid her head on his shoulder and watched out the window in silence for a moment.

"Sheldon I'm glad you set all this up," she said finally. "I'm having a blast."

"Just wait til we get to Los Angeles," he answered, removing his hand to slip his arm around her. "This is going to be the train-filled trip of a lifetime. First we start with lunch at Carney's in Studio City, a hot dog stand in a converted railroad dining car. Next stop, Travel Town, an outdoor museum featuring 43 railroad engines, cars and other rolling stock from the 1880s to the 1930s. Finally, we're off to the glitz and glamour of Hollywood for dinner at-that's right-the Hollywood Carney's, a hot dog stand in a different converted railroad dining car."

"Well, that should be right up your alley," Whitney smiled.

As almost an afterthought Sheldon asked, "was there anything you wanted to do?"

"I'd like to go up and see the sign," Whitney replied.

"For Carney's or Travel Town?"

Whitney snickered, "for Hollywood, silly! The most famous sign in town."

"Oh. I suppose we could."

"Shel," she said, bringing her hand up to his chin and turning him to face her. "Thank you." And with that, she kissed him lightly on his cheek.

"Whitney," Sheldon said slowly, turning more fully to face her. Whitney tried to draw her eyes away from his mouth but couldn't. Her own had gone dry and she swallowed.

"Yeah?"

"I don't think I mind your germs."

Before Whitney could ask what that meant, his head dipped to hers and he met her lips with his, surprising a gasp out of her when his tongue lapped at her mouth. Sheldon's fingers ghosted over the side of her face. He rested his thumb against her cheek and tilted his head to take advantage of her parted lips. Not only was he a fast learner, but if Whitney had known what it meant, she would have said Sheldon Cooper was a big ole five.

She opened her eyes as she felt him pull away. His face was a study of wonder as he licked his lips, his hand still touching her face.

"I'd better take these back to the dining car," he said, standing quickly and gathering the cups.

"I'm ah...I'll just...get ready for bed," Whitney finished lamely. Sheldon made it almost to the door before he turned, rushed back, cups still in his hands and leaned down for another kiss. He then turned just as abruptly and left.

Whitney did not wait for him to come back. She assumed, rightly, that he needed time to sort through the myriad emotions that must be running through him just as they were her. She changed into the silky sleep shirt she had brought and slid between the sheets with a sigh. She had left the light on in the bath compartment, which gave a dim glow to the rest of the room, along with the window on Sheldon's side of the car, which she had left open for him to see out.

S```````````````````W

An hour or so later, Sheldon crept back in to their car. He ran through his nighttime routine as quickly and silently as possible, closed the window and left the light on in the bath compartment. Reaching for his messenger bag on the floor, he quietly lifted his laptop out and began to work, dimming the brightness of the screen so it would not wake Whitney.

He did not work for long before his eyes started to get droopy with fatigue. Rubbing at them, he saved his work and powered down, sliding the laptop back in its case. He was just sliding down in the sheets when he heard Whitney mumble something in her sleep. He raised his head and looked over in the dim light of the compartment and saw her head moving side to side. Believing she was having another nightmare, Sheldon crossed quickly to her side and slid under the covers beside her, wrapping his arms around her as best he could.

"There, there," he whispered. "Sheldon's here."

Whitney said nothing, but shifted in her sleep and then stilled. Within moments her breathing evened out again and she drifted off peacefully. Not long after, Sheldon followed suit, still curled around her.


	11. Chapter 11

Cht 11

_I finally find  
You and I collide_

"Whitney," Sheldon whispered, as he traced kisses over her face.

"Sheldon?" Whitney said groggily. She was grasping with her mind, clinging sleepily to traces of the dream she had been having. She had been only moments from a sweet release when suddenly the dream changed and instead of rolling with the waves of the Pacific as she wound around Sheldon, she was in fact rocking under the rhythm of the train. Whitney made a slightly frustrated whimper before it occured to her that Sheldon was leaning over her, his lips on her brow while his thumb traced lightly over her temple.

"Whitney," he said again softly. She realized now it was his voice that woke her. "You said you love me."

Before she could respond, his mouth found hers and his tongue dipped languidly between her lips. Whitney fisted a hand in his pajama top and ran the other underneath it, caressing his chest. She moaned softly when he shifted to lay more fully over top of her and she felt his erection pressing into her hip as he thrust gently.

Her hands started sliding more purposefully now, divesting him of his clothes. Sheldon began unbuttoning her shirt as well, kissing his way down as he went. He buried his face in her shoulder as he placed himself at her entrance, an instinct borne of millenia leading him to push slowly against her yielding softness.

"Oh dear lord!" he moaned, straining to regain control. Sheldon felt as if his eyes were going to cross when she moved against him and gripped his hips. His hands glided up from her sides and fisted in her hair as his mouth found hers again. They began moving together, spurred on by the movement of the wheels on the tracks beneath them.

Sheldon's one last coherent thought as he lost himself in the sensations bombarding him was that this was the best completion. She was the one thing in his life that made him feel as though all was well. The third knock, the sixth dumpling. His constant.

They moved together, thrust for thrust, the beating of their hearts quickening with their pace. Whitney's fingers dug in for purchase, spurring him on as he cupped his hands behind her shoulders for leverage while he plunged deeper still.

"Oh Whitney, I love you too," he said, feeling her core tighten against him.

Hearing his words sent Whitney tumbling over the edge of her release as she cried out. Her hands slid up to Sheldon's shoulders as she bucked under him one final time. She laid her forehead to his chest as she felt him stiffen up, his hands tightening in her hair as he stilled inside her. Whitney laid a kiss over his heart and murmured sweetly as he finally went limp against her, then she wrapped her legs around his, her arms around his waist.

"More than trains?" Whitney asked, smiling into his chest.

"Oh so much more than trains," he replied, spent.

"I love you more than trains, too, Shel."

She cradled him until the rocking of the train sent them both drifting off to sleep again, not waking until later that morning. When the light came streaming in through the window they put the covers over their heads and spent the morning conducting an age-old experiment in biology, not surfacing again until it was nearly time to detrain.

S``````````W

When the dynamic duo returned to 2311 Los Robles, the other inhabitants noticed a change in their fellow physicist. It was subtle, and anyone who did not know Dr. Sheldon Cooper would have no idea what it was, nor how momentous it was. But when Whitney Ballard and Sheldon Cooper entered apartment 4A, they did so holding hands. And when they stood and faced their friends to talk about how much they enjoyed their trip, the hand that held Whitney's moved casually to the small of her back and pulled her infinitessimally closer. That small gesture spoke volumes, but when he turned and placed a small kiss on her hair, the other occupants stifled a collective gasp and shared one small glance as they realized that their eccentric old friend finally had a deal. And her name was Whitney Ballard.

S``````````W

**A/N: Thank you, Howie Day, for the song that inspired the story.**


End file.
